French to bring in a data tax

Details are emerging of the way that France is planning force Google Amazon and Facebook to pay tax.

President François Hollande needs the cash and French Internet companies have largely surrendered to Yankee companies. France is planning a tax on data collection which would be based on the number of users an Internet firm tracked and could be verified by outside auditors. The authors did not recommend tax rates or estimate how much money such a levy could raise but it would be a bit scary for the likes of Google who would be force to pay France shedloads.

The new tax would require legislation, which the government said could be introduced by the end of the year. However a proposal to generate taxes from the gathering of personal information could also draw scrutiny from the French privacy regulator, which has raised concerns about the amount of data that companies like Google and Facebook collect.